would serve as a powerful economic sanction against Mississippi which would, to use his words, "collapse without the sweat of the Negro." Mr. Chairman, this economic-boycott business is something that we in the South have been accused of using, but which has actually been used as the tool of the NAACP and its sister radical organizations, including the Communist Party and its subsidiaries. They speak very fluently of the existence of what they call an official reign of terror throughout the Southern States. Permit me to say, Mr. Chairman, that I think they can very well look into their own back yard to find a reign of terror. There is not a street in any Southern city that I know of where a person cannot walk down the street in full personal security. I can say categorically that there are streets in the city of Washington, D. C., where a white person would not dare to venture after dark. That has been illustrated hundreds upon hundreds of times. To use specific cases, three young white high-school students from Mississippi were assaulted by a gang of Negroes on a street here in Washington after dark, an unprovoked assault upon innocent young sightseers. In March, I received correspondence as a member of the District of Columbia Committee, from a union of workers in one of the Federal agencies, this union being made up primarily of lady workers, demanding police protection on the streets at night, and citing specific instances wherein white ladies had been assaulted in Negro sections on the streets at night, for no reason except for the fact that they happened to be white people in a Negro section. There is not a city or a town in the Southern States but where Negroes are welcome. The city of Dearborn, Mich., for instance, up in the land of desegregation, integration, and social equality, a city of 97,000 people, has an unwritten law against a Negro spending the night in that town. The mayor, a gentleman named Hubbard, very openly and frankly admits that that is true, and says that he and the people of that city intend to keep it that way. As to this reign of terror business, the State of Mississippi has 986,494 Negroes in her population. The city of New York has some sixty-odd thousand fewer; they have 918,191. The CHAIRMAN. Is that the city of New York? Mr. WILLIAMS. I mean the State of New York, I am sorry. So you might say that they have practically the same colored population. Yet the State of New York has more than five times as many Negroes in prison as does the State of Mississippi. To be specific, the State of New York Negro prison population is 7,585. The Mississippi Negro prison population is 1,432. I might add there that the integrated States have more than twice as many Negroes per capita in their penitentiaries as do the segregated States. So if there is a reign of terror, Mr. Chairman, I think perhaps this antilynching legislation and all of this other police state legislation should be directed primarily at the Northern States rather than at the Southern States, which have enjoyed racial harmony and comity for the past hundred years. 79992-56-19 One more point, Mr. Chairman, and then I will stop, and I would like to again thank the committee for its indulgence in hearing me at this length. That is that the antilynching bill which is before your committee is directed at a nonexistent crime or evil, the crime of lynching. Congressman Davis, in his testimony just preceding, established that fact on the basis of official reports of the United States Government and other agencies, official agencies. The other day I requested my secretary to contact all of the Government agencies which keep statistical data, including the Library of Congress, the Department of Labor, and other agencies, and to find out for me the number of people who had been killed as a result of violence arising out of labor disputes in the last 10 years. Mr. Chairman, the Department of Labor, the Library of Congress, and other agencies of this Government kept statistics on every conceivable subject. They could even tell you how many horseflies there are for every square yard in the Chicago stockyards. They can give you statistical data which nobody in the world is interested in. They make it their business to keep statistics. However, I was surprised to find that no agency of Government keeps any record whatsoever of the number of labor disputes, of incidents of violence arising out of labor disputes, the number of people injured or the number of people killed as a result of labor disputes. Now, if this legislation is really intended to correct an evil, Mr. Chairman, I think you might well amend this legislation so as to make it include as the basis for describing a crime as a lynching crime, any attack made by two or more persons upon a person who is attempting to exercise not only his constitutional but his God-given right to earn a living. The CHAIRMAN. Yes, there is an amendment like that pending. Mr. WILLIAMS. There is an amendment like that pending? The CHAIRMAN. Yes. Mr. WILLIAMS. I hope that this committee will act with honesty, with integrity, and without regard to the politics in this situation and, if it reports such legislation, reports such legislation to the Senate, and it eventually reaches the House, that this legislation will include all such crimes as well as the nonexistent crime of racial lynchings, allegedly confined to the Southern States. Mr. Chairman, I am very grateful to the committee for hearing me, and while this is a subject about which I could talk, as I am sure my distinguished senior Senator could, for 60 days without stopping, I hope he does not have to do that. Nevertheless, I will close by saying that while Members of the House and Senate whose States and districts are made up of an infinitesimally small percentage of Negro population, and do not have the problem, consider this legislation as a perfect political vehicle for riding themselves back into office, if they just go down South below the Mason-Dixon line, they will find that down there, with whites as well as colored, it is a matter very, very close to our hearts, and a matter about which we do not feel that there should be any political toying. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Congressman Williams. Mr. Attorney General? Mr. WIMBERLY. Mr. Chairman.. The CHAIRMAN. Give your name to the reporter. STATEMENT OF HORACE WIMBERLY, ASSISTANT ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE STATE OF TEXAS Mr. WIMBERLY. I am Horace Wimberly, assistant attorney general from Austin, Tex. The CHAIRMAN. You are the assistant attorney general of the State of Texas? Mr. WIMBERLY. Yes, sir. Mr. YOUNG. I understand, Mr. Wimberly, you are going to open your statement today, and then come back at 2:30 tomorrow afternoon and continue with your statement. Would that meet with your program all right? Mr. WIMBERLY. That would be satisfactory; yes, sir. Mr. YOUNG. Could you qualify yourself and open your statement at this time, please? Mr. WIMBERLY. Well, I want to say, likewise, that I appreciate the opportunity of appearing here in this committee, and I have a letter with me from the attorney general of the State which I would like, of course, to read to the committee, and to file with you, and I do not know how much of that you would like to hear this afternoon. Mr. YOUNG. How long is the letter, Mr. Wimberly? Mr. WIMBERLY. It is just a page or two. I could read it quickly, if you like Mr. YOUNG. Why don't you read the letter, sir, and then we will adjourn until tomorrow at 2:30. Mr. WIMBERLY. Thank you, sir. The CHAIRMAN. Read the letter, and I will take it into the record. Mr. WIMBERLY. This is a letter addressed to Senator Eastland: DEAR SENATOR EASTLAND: Due to an illness in my immediate family, I regret that I cannot personally appear before your committee at this time. However, Assistant Attorney General Horace Wimberly will represent this office and will submit this letter which sets out my general views on pending civil rights legislation. He will also discuss in some detail the individual bills now under consideration by your committee. The protection of the civil rights of every citizen in this State is of paramount importance to the people of Texas and particularly important to State and local law enforcement officials. All available evidence indicates that the civil rights of Texas citizens are fully and properly protected at the present time, and that no necessity exists for additional Federal legislation in this field. No question more vitally affects the delicate balance of State-Federal relations than does civil rights. These relations have been strained to the breaking point by recent Supreme Court decisions thrusting on the Department of Justice, over their protests, such exclusive powers as the control of subversives. Enactment of legislation that would impose harsh Federal controls and authority over local enforcement officials is not only unneeded but could be a disastrous blow to close cooperation between all levels of law enforcement. Let me say at the outset that I regard most of the civil rights proposals as purely vote-buying gimmicks. While the protection of civil rights is a day-in and day-out proposition, a national election year seems to give the question a powerful resurgence of interest by the Federal Government. Cool heads are needed for any study of civil rights and legislation (particularly in this sensitive field) should not be passed with one eye on the polls. The question boils down to whether the vote of a minority pressure group is worth wholesale Federal in vasion of State and local police fields, and whether the rights of all must be jeopardized to gain a few votes. After studying the proposed measures carefully, I am firmly convinced that their adoption would be the largest single stride ever made toward an absolute Federal police state. Passage of such laws would be a brutal slap to every State in the Union, substituting Federal law for State law, substituting Federal courts for State courts, and imposing unrealistic punishment for possible offenses. If the present situation is a critical emergency which Congress feels would justify an absolute police state, it should not be concealed in these bills. The matter should be submitted to the people in a constitutional amendment. The proposed civil rights bills can be divided into three major categories as follows: (a) Proposing a commission appointed by the President or a joint congressional committee to either investigate alleged civil rights violations or to propose civil rights legislation, (b) establishing a separate civil rights division in the Department of Justice or pledging the legal machinery of the Justice Department to support those whose civil rights might have been abridged, (c) making Federal felonies out of a number of offenses which have previously been State misdemeanors. Under (a) above, the need for remedial legislation, if any, is clearly the responsibility of Congress, and it should not be delegated to the executive branch. A commission, appointed by the President, just before a national election, would scarcely be divorced of politics. A strictly nonpartisan congressional committee to investigate the need for civil rights legislation might be appointed after the election when it could make a deliberate and unbiased investigation. We would welcome such an investigation in Texas. With regard to the proposal to establish a separate division for civil rights in the Justice Department, the existing personnel are now devoting considerable time to investigating real and imagined infringements. The FBI training program for civil rights has been well received and is helpful, but the States are already doing a good job through their law enforcement officials. Extra personnel in the Justice Department would be more of an irritant to the States than an aid to the Nation. The proposals to furnish free legal representation by the Justice Department to all those who contend their civil rights have been impaired would open the door to all sorts of abuses. It would establish a precedent of providing Federal legal services for plaintiffs in all types of cases. It could easily result in not a new section in the Justice Department, but a Department of Free Federal Plaintiffs' Attorneys, even larger than the legal staff of the present Justice Department. The final group of bills make Federal felonies out of State misdemeanors. One (S. 900) defines lynching as an attempt to commit violence on another's property because of his religion. It has been pointed out that this could result in two Baptists being convicted of a Federal felony for kicking at a Presbyterian's fence and missing! Other bills would impose felony penalties for offenses that haven't been committed in several generations and which have never been considered felonies in nature. Most of these bills are not only unneeded but insulting as well. The United States Attorney General has just completed a conference on the problem of congestion in the Federal courts. At his invitation we sent a representative to this meeting at which it was established that the Federal dockets are much more congested than are those of the State courts. Much of this congestion results from the trend to make Federal criminal law supreme. Review of State court convictions by Federal courts, establishing of additional Federal offenses, substitution of Federal offenses for State offenses by judicial decree or congressional action raises the very real and apparent danger that continuation in this direction may contribute to establishment of a totalitarian government, as history proves it has in other countries. Consideration of all of these bills should be postponed until after the elections to avoid the ready explanation that they are vote-buying devices beamed at appeasing a minority pressure group. Many of these bills have been introduced before without any significant success, leaving considerable doubt of their need. Banded together they represent a larger problem, but are not more desirable. If passed, the problems created would be greater than the problems attempted to be solved. I deeply appreciate the deliberation that this committee is giving these measures, and we are grateful for the opportunity for Mr. Wimberly to appear before you and represent this office. Sincerely, JOHN BEN SHEPPERD, Attorney General. Mr. YOUNG. Thank you, Mr. Wimberly. For the record, will you give us your full name, please, sir? Mr. WIMBERLY. Horace Wimberly. Mr. YOUNG. And your title? Mr. WIMBERLY. Assistant attorney general of Texas. Mr. WIMBERLY. Capitol Building, Austin, Tex. Mr. YOUNG. Authorized to practice law in the State of Texas? Mr. YOUNG. Are you here with the permission or under the authority or direction of the Attorney General of the State of Texas? Mr. WIMBERLY. Yes, sir. Mr. YOUNG. Upon authority of the chairman, the hearing is adjourned until 2: 30 tomorrow, at which time we will hear the rest of the testimony of Mr. Wimberly. Thank you, sir. (Whereupon, at 5:25 p. m., the committee adjourned, to reconvene at 2:30 p. m., Wednesday, June 27, 1956.) |